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Thursday, September 13, 2007

How Trent Green is going to deal with this adversity

So how is Trent Green going to deal with dropped passes?

You saw Sunday that he had plenty of opportunities to react to balls placed in receiver's hands that were dropped. Years ago, Dolphins fans would see Dan Marino spew expletive punctuated poison whenever receivers would run bad routes or drop easy catches.

Green had five passes dropped on him last Sunday. And as he says, "Everybody's got their own thing. You got quarterbacks that are in your face guys. You have pointers, screamers, yellers. But that's not me."

Green is apparently one to nurture his receivers, to build up, to encourage.

"What you do is try to encourage and try and lead and say, 'Next time I'm coming back to you.' And that's what happened with Chris [Chambers]," Green said. "After he had that drop, the very next play he stepped up and made that catch over the middle.

"Sometimes you can't get back to them on the next play, but if they get back in the huddle, you say, 'Hey come on, I'm counting on you, that would have been a first down.' But it's never in a negative way. I've never approached it that way. If I'm screaming, yelling and pointing fingers, for me that doesn't work, because I'm not going to be perfect. And I wasn't perfect in the game Sunday.''

Don't mistake nurturing and encouragement for acceptance. Green says that while he may not yell at his receiver after a drop, he's definitely not going to let the drop simply go unnoticed.

"I never ignore it because I believe it's something that needs to be talked about," Green said. "Like what happened with Dave [Martin]. Immediately he goes to the bench and sits down and obviously he's disappointed. He's more mad than anybody else could possibly be because he knows he let himself down, he let his team down. So I see him go sit down and everybody is giving him his space. Nobody's sitting near him.

"So the first person I went to is Dave and said, 'Hey are you OK?' And he said, 'Yeah I got to make that catch.' And I said, 'You're good, we call that play again, I'm coming back to you. We need to make that catch, you know that, I know that. But that's not going to make me stop throwing it to you.' That's what works for me."

16 Comments:

Dan said...

Ahhhh.... It's like the Kinder, gentler QB. So soft he's full of Charmin. If the pass rush barely misses him, does he go over to the Cowboys D and say, "You were so close! But I beleive in you, and next time, you'll get me!"

That's all good with me chemistry is built through experience. Just don't do it again. Receivers need to learn from their mistakes. Drop passes kill but pointing a finger and blaming people when they already know they made a bad play is worse. Building confidence with communication is what this team needs, things will get better.

This actually makes me more comfortable with Trent Green as a leader. If nothing else, he's a great person for John Beck to learn from. Trent seemed like he can run this offense based on last week and I think we're in good hands for now. I am a manager of a relatively large team and feel the same way Trent does. Sometimes it's good to let your people know that you understand nobody's perfect, but you're still counting on them. At the same time though, let's not do that again. GO FINS!!!!!

The dictionary describes adversity as: "a state of adverse conditions; state of misfortune or calamity."

Armando, based on that definition, I wouldn't go as far as to say that Trent Green has to deal with and thus, over come this pass dropping "adversity."

The men who dropped the balls on Sunday against the Skins know what they did is intolerable. Its not up to Green to make sure they catch the ball. It is up to Green to make sure the ball is thrown to his WRs in a CATCHABLE area. If Green keeps doing HIS job, then its up the WRs and TEs to do THEIR jobs. There's no adversity here, just basic fundamentals of football. If you're a WR or TE....or an RB coming out of the backfield, YOU CATCH THE BALL. That is your job.

From what I saw on Sunday, Green did his job very well. I'd like to see some more down the field stuff, but Green's passes were VERY catchable and there were instances where drives were stalled because a WR couldn't make a simple catch. That is where the game was lost.

Every QB has their own personality but we didn't see a lot of drops back in the Marino days. I used to love watching Danny get fired up. As soon as he got pissed the whole team rose to the occasion. Montana was the exact opposite, he was Mr. cool. Remember the John Candy story?

The QB can only do his job and get a catchable ball to his receivers. The receivers have to make those catches. The biggest momentum breaker, especially on 3rd down, is to call the right play, get the ball to the right guy, only to watch him drop an easy pass. This happens all too often with us and most of the time on 3rd down.

Throw, drop, drive done...

I see a lot poor technique. If you watch Wes Welker catch a pass he uses his hands away from his body. Like my father taught me in pee wee.

If you watch Chris Chambers (attempt) to catch a pass he always allows the ball to get into his body. It looks like it bounces off of him and then he cradles it. When it is a very difficult throw where is has to extend his hands he does well. It's technique, don't let the ball get into your body. After 5 years in the league you have to know the coaches are busting on him about this but it doesn't change. That means there's a problem in his head and it is not going to change. He probably catches all day in practice with his hands but come game time he reverts back for whatever mental reason.

As a QB green recognizes this so why should he beat up himself? If the ball is there, he has done his job. It's up to the coaches to correct poor technique and if they can't they need to get rid of the player.

I love Greens approach. I play hockey and coach young kids and I have always felt that yelling at a player is counterproductive. It embarrasses the player and breaks their confidence so much that the next time they are in the situation they tense up out of fear of being yelled at. People always perform better when they know their teammates have confidence in them. Maybe one of the reasons Danny never won the big one was because his wr's were afraid of failing so they didn't give it their all. You never know but I do feel positive reenforcement is the best way to get your players to produce. If that doesn't work just cut them (:), but never humiliate them in front of fans and teammates.

Enough with the Namby pamby,"Don't yell at him, you'll hurt his feelings, and he will be to scared of dropping the ball to catch it" crap! Marino's Recievers would have gone through walls to catch a pass, because they knew He was working twice as hard as they were to get the ball to them, and the least they could do was give an all out effort to catch it. You didn't see the receivers break down and cry to their mommies in the stands that Dan was being mean to them, you saw them make more of an effort to do it right! I have no problem with the fact that Trent isn't the guy to light a fire under these receivers' butts, but somebody needs to, be it Cam, the receivers' coach, Hell I don't have a problem with a Defensive leader climbing on their butts. Obviously sweet talking them, and telling them how good they are, to give them good self esteem isn't working. This is just like how the bed wetting liberals in the Teachers' union have tried to expunge any semblance of right, and wrong, or compitition in the schools leading to our absolutely dreadful test scores against effective schools who will tell kids when they are wrong, and correct kids when they fail, so they can learn from the experience, instead of repeating the same old bad habits.

Each situation should have its own reaction. In this case Green may be a bit soft but he is right. No use in beating up another guy because he sucks at what he is doing. It is not his position to judge anything. Being a team member and a leader you do what you do to the best of your ability and don't overreact to adversity. Not that a kick in the pants is bad, it just has to be used sparingly. Dan was mad every game at the end of his career. It wasn't fun for him and you could see it. He retired because he could not handle the pressure he put on himself for perfection and he expected teammates to be the same.

About this blog

Armando Salguero has covered South Florida sports for 25 years, starting as a 19-year-old in 1982. He's covered the Dolphins since 1990 and hosts a Dolphins hour show every weeknight 7-8 on 790 TheTicket (790theticket.com). He has worked nationally for ESPN and also writes sports columns for The Miami Herald.